The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said Friday it discovered a second Boston rest home had been operating for four years without a license even though it had investigated complaints in the house three times in the last year.

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The DPH license for The Fairmount Rest Home in Hyde Park expired in January 2010. But DPH spokeswoman Anne Roach said DPH inspectors entered the home for disabled residents in September 2013, December 2013 and May 2014 to investigate complaints. Yet they never checked to see if the license was active.

"DPH is working with this facility to bring them into compliance...the re-licensing challenges with Melville and Fairmount facilities are outliers," Roach said in a statement released Friday.

She said one complaint was found to be not valid but she would not describe the other two complaints or if they were rectified.

"We had deficiencies, so they don't give it (licenses) out until you clean up the deficiencies," Elizabeth King, administrator for the Fairmount Home, told NewsCenter 5.

King said they have rectified the problems, but also would not describe the complaints.

"Now we're waiting for (the DPH inspector) to come back to check them out," said King.

But Roach also acknowledged there is no protocol for checking the licenses of the 70 rest homes in Massachusetts. This week's inventory was launched after NewsCenter 5's story on the Melville Rest Home in Dorchester aired.

The Melville facility was evacuated in the dead of night last week after a Boston ISD official on a routine kitchen inspection discovered the house mired in filth and with disturbing evidence of neglect.

Sixteen mentally disabled residents were immediately moved to an emergency shelter.

The license for the home expired in 2011 and was never renewed.

Rodent dropping and gnawing patterns, stagnant water in the sink, stained bedding, unsanitary conditions, food unfit for human consumption and despondent residents who hadn't bathed for a month were found in the home, according to Boston Inspectional Service officials.